"Teams like Serbia, Israel and Montenegro are just great teams to play. It's going to be a great experience, especially for our young guys in our national team to play against guys like (Serbia's) Milos Teodosic and (Israel's) Lior Eliyahu or (Montengro's) Nikola Pekovic. That's amazing."

The two top of each of the six groups advance to EuroBasket 2013, as well as the best four third-placed teams.

But Gavel is thinking much smaller.

"We definitely are not thinking about moving to the next round. We just want to learn from it and have fun and try not to get blown out every time."

Gavel said he appreciates the new format.

"We like it because we can see and play against those big teams. That's the main thing.

"We can't even think about going to the next round.

"But we want to compete and we want to have fun and give the young guys the chance to play against top European and really top world players.

"I'm happy for everyone who will play against them."

The Slovak Republic start their Group A campaign on Wednesday at Estonia.